Brandon Cox, a disciple of Rick Warren and pastor of Grace Hills Church in Bentonville, AR, is another example of the downgrade within evangelicalism. Cox’s church is a plant of Warren’s Saddleback Church, and Cox still works for Warren as editor of Warren’s blog site, Pastors.com. Grace Hill’s Church, according to their website, still “considers Saddleback a key partner, and a close friend.”
Cox is known for preaching a watered down Gospel, much like Warren’s, usually devoid of a clear call to repentance. But now Cox is promoting the same New Age nonsense that’s been creeping into the Evangelical church that Beth Moore, Ann Voskamp and many others are promoting. Being “silent,” and listening for God’s “still, small voice.” In the video below, Cox talks about starting a new sermon series on four ways that God speaks to us, and one of those ways is this.
He goes on to talk about how to distinguish God’s voice from the other voices. As is the case with all New Age charismatics, Cox does not believe in the sufficiency of Scripture. While many, including Cox, may give lip-service to the sufficiency of God’s Word, it is a logical fallacy to believe in extra-biblical revelation from God, while truly believing that Scripture alone is sufficient.
He goes on to declare:
God uses silence in some pretty powerful ways, because we have a hard time getting quiet, but the Scriptures many times say until you’re willing to force yourself to get quiet, you may not hear the whispers of God.
He then goes into a very strange explanation of the Genesis account of the fall, and explains that between the moment of the fall, and the time that Adam and Eve heard God walking through the Garden looking for them, was a time of “awkward silence,” and this “awkward silence” is the root of why man today has a “fear” of silence, and has been searching for a way to “hear from God.” However, he believes, we shouldn’t be afraid of silence, as this is how we can “hear from God.”
He goes on to explain that in the Garden, it was “very quiet,” therefore, they were able to “hear” the footsteps of God. As though, if it were not quiet, God would not have been able to reveal himself to them.
